Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

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Awww. Chris Staab Doesn’t Like Me

I wrote a couple weeks ago about Olivet College student Chris Staab and his amusingly idiotic videos about my friend Jeremiah Bannister’s radio show. That prompted him to make a video about me that is exactly as juvenile as one might expect given his previous efforts.
First, he puts the picture of me that you see on the right sidebar on the screen and says that I’m smiling because I have a banana shoved up my ass. Seriously. I’d say that he’s displaying the mentality of a 12-year old, but that would be an insult to 12-year olds. Then he plays a clip of my show where I talked about visiting the right wing websites after Obama announced his support of marriage equality, after which I read a couple dozen of the most appallingly racist comments imaginable. Comments like these:

I’m surprised he didn’t go one step further in approving of inter-species marriage, seeing as how he’s married to a baboon, or is she a really tall chimpanze? Anyway, if it’s cool in kenya, why not here???

NiggyThe Panderer’s failure of the day!!! Keep failing NigBama!!!

My guess is this clears the deck for Lakqisha and LaShasa to bring home their white girlfriends…JMO

No rational person could deny that those are incredibly racist and bigoted things to say. But Staab, who couldn’t find rationality with a GPS, decides to beat up a straw man instead:

The fact that he’s calling right wingers bigots because they have common sense in respects (sic) to the homosexual lifestyle. Okay. It’s common sense to know that homosexuality is just gross, disgusting and wrong, and it’s perfectly natural to be grossed out by it. So for him to call right wingers bigots because they, you know, are on the right side of history, is obviously showing how embarrassed he is of his own side because they have to defend, you know, homosexuals and that’s gotta be difficult, to defend the behavior of the homosexuals has gotta be tough, so it doesn’t surprise me that he would say something as ridiculous as that.

If at this point you’re starting to wonder how he got into college, that’s hardly an unreasonable reaction. He actually thinks that’s a coherent, compelling argument. But he’s just getting warmed up. Then he plays a bunch of edited clips where I said something funny and my co-host, Don Reese, laughed at it. He doesn’t play the many times that Don says something funny and I laughed at it because that would undermine his point that Don is a “cheerleading sissy.” Now that’s just funny. I know he can’t tell this on the radio, but Don is 6’5″ and bald and looks pretty damn scary. Staab would crap his pants before saying that to his face (not that Don would do anything but laugh at him, of course).

He then plays a clip of me talking about how the polls show that younger people are far more accepting of gay rights than older generations. And he responds:

He’s assuming that young people are more in favor of gay marriage than older people, when actually that’s not correct, and in fact he, if you paid attention to that clip, you’ll notice that he never cited one source, which is pretty much par for the course for him, because that’s what he does on a regular basis. He just assumes things, and you know what they say about assuming, it makes an ass out of you and me.

Ooh, a tired cliche! How cute. There’s no need to assume this, of course. Every poll for the last 10 years has found that people under 30 or so are far more supportive of full equality than those who are older. In fact, age correlates perfectly with support for equality — the older you are, the less likely you are to favor equal rights. Here’s a poll from just last week that found that 69% of those under 35 support marriage equality, compared to only 38 percent of seniors. I wonder if Staab can find a single survey that doesn’t find something similar. Actually, I don’t wonder at all. He can’t. And he won’t even try.

And then he has an unidentified caller, who says pretty much nothing:

Ed Brayton is very left wing extremist and the man does not give the opposing party a chance to defend themselves…He’s a hardcore left liberal and he won’t let the facts speak for themselves, he lives in denial.

Wow, how terribly convincing. Did you two practice this meaningless pablum before hand or just wing it? They both agree that “these people” — me, presumably — are trying to turn us into a “communist nation.” Oh, and I “look likea Thanksgiving day blimp” — while his anonymous caller, ironically given his earlier comments about Don laughing at the things I say that are actually funny, giggles in hysterics. How amusing. I’m fat. That’s incredibly original and meaningful and obviously disproves everything I’ve ever said. It’s kind of cute listening to these two drooling quarterwits try to play grown up.

Comments

femtowits, perhaps? The utter ignorance, bigotry and hatred from Mr. Staab is amazing. I guess it is good he can say such things so we know exactly who people like that are.

People evincing such attributes have yet to ever be shown to be on the “right” side of history. His inablity to support any of his claims with actual facts demonstrates him to be simply one more liar for Christ. It’s a shame that some of the good people who happen to be Christians have to share such a title with a very scared and hateful man. Perhaps this will get them to leave such nonsense behind.

That is one sad little youtube channel. Most of his videos have less than 100 views, and his most watched video is the one you linked in your last post… which has 1 like 29 dislikes. I think that’s a good indication of the quality of his arguments.

Why waste your time on this clown Ed? From the quotes you inserted it is clear that he is a) not very well spoken and b) not interested in tackling any of the real issues. It is a sign illustrating that he does not have an argument to attack your beliefs so he just goes after you personally. That type of argument is quite tedious.

I’m 61 (I guess that makes me a “senior”) and I have never been anything but fully supportive of marriage equality for anyone; in fact, equlity of all rights and privileges for anyone. An the people I hang around with generally are as well. Although I hang around with scientists and musicians. Some teachers. You kow — educated, intelligent and talented people. Must be a biased sample.

Seriously, I think more older folks may support equality than the polls may reflect.

#5 is spot on. Obviously you dont spend a whole lot of time destroying the arguments of rational, intelligent people but at least you attack morons who have something resembling an audience. How is some kid from a no account school, making 5th rate arguments on a youtube channel no one watches worth your time?

“It’s common sense to know that homosexuality is just gross, disgusting and wrong …”

Yes! It’s so disgusting! So disgusting that idiots like you seem to spend 23 hours out of each 24 thinking about hot, sweaty, well-lubricated, filthy, submissive, anonymous man buttsecks in airport restrooms.
Closets have doors for a reason, you know.

Stevarious: most 12-year-olds have enough sense of shame to keep their stupid vulgarity under wraps. When I was that age, my friends and I knew to keep our stupidest jokes to ourselves. No self-respecting 12-year-old would ever want to be mistaken for a child!

“Although I hang around with scientists and musicians. Some teachers. You kow — educated, intelligent and talented people. Must be a biased sample.

Seriously, I think more older folks may support equality than the polls may reflect.”

I think the polls probably do reflect the relative sizes of different people’s bubbles. I mean 32% is still a lot of people. Even though we’re not in the majority we still have plenty of folks to hang out with.

How is some kid from a no account school, making 5th rate arguments on a youtube channel no one watches worth your time?

According to Wikipedia, Olivet College is a college affiliated with the United Church of Christ, a liberal Christian Church, founded by the same folks who founded Oberlin College in Ohio, not a phony institution like Regent or Liberty. Since it’s located in Michigan, perhaps Prof. Hanley of Adrian College can give us some insight as to how it’s perceived in that state. However, it would seem that referring to it as a no account school appears to be seriously in error.

Every poll for the last 10 years has found that people under 30 or so are far more supportive of full equality than those who are older. In fact, age correlates perfectly with support for equality — the older you are, the less likely you are to favor equal rights.

On the off chance Chris Staab happens to wander by and checks the comments, I’d like to draw his attention to the Berkeley Survey Documentation and Analysis website, and its interface to the General Social Survey. It includes a nice variety of basic statistical tools, which allow running basic correlations, controlling for variables, regressions, and so on. It even makes some basic (Razib Kahn put up a half-decent tutorial over at his Gene Expression blog.)

For example, variable MARHOMO gives responses to a question on gay marriage; it was asked about in survey YEAR of 1988, 2004, 2006, 2008, and 2010. I’ve regrouped birth COHORT by decade to generate the variable CHRTDEC, which makes it pretty straightforward to see the trend. Yes: these days younger cohorts tend to be much more supportive of legalizing Gay Marriage.

Playing with the GSS seems to help with grasping what the attitudes of the country actually are like — though since the survey is run only about every 2 years, it’s not so good for short-term fluctuations. However, it might help Chris Staab realize his personal circle of acquaintance is not a nationally representative sample.

@0, Ed Brayton:

I wonder if Staab can find a single survey that doesn’t find something similar. Actually, I don’t wonder at all. He can’t.

The 1988 GSS survey had a very mild gradient between cohorts. However, that’s pretty dated.

I guess he’s not terribly familiar with your blog. You’re frequently quite critical of the Obama administration. You’re not the “blind libtard” charicature he’s trying to portray you as. As for the fat comments, I’m just sad. You’re the third blogger this week (that I’ve read) post about shallow remarks that aren’t relevant to anything. You’re fat, your baby is ugly, you’re an ugly bucktoothed lesbian are all up there with “I’ll pray for you” as an admission of having no valid points.